‘Everything Is Fair and Square in War’ : Aquino Officials Harden Stance Toward Insurgents

Bienvenido Querolico, the mayor of Ballesteros, had a pistol at his side.

“I am afraid,” the mayor said, “because I do not want to die. The rebels have sent word to me that I must leave my house, leave my town. I hired 30 armed men to protect me. But still, I cannot go out because I am outnumbered.”

His words were addressed to the top Philippine commanders, who had come here to the capital of Cagayan province in northern Luzon, the main Philippine island, in an effort to find out why the military is losing ground to the Communist rebels of the New People’s Army.

“You must see that this is a war now, and we have to flush them all out,” Querolico said. “We must fight them now. The time for talking is over.”

The mayor had taken a hard-line position in the national debate about how to end the 17-year-old insurgency, which continues despite the downfall in February of Ferdinand E. Marcos, the dictatorial president who was regarded by many analysts as the principal reason for it.

There has been a hardening of attitudes across the board recently--among the top officials of President Corazon Aquino’s government and among the rebels themselves. The death toll, meanwhile, has risen to more than 800 since Aquino took office in February, nearly 100 of them in Cagayan province.

Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, in his toughest statement yet on the insurgency, told reporters on the war-torn southern island of Mindanao, “Until such time as a cease-fire is in place, everything is fair and square in war.”

In the course of the visit to Cagayan, where the government has deployed howitzers, tanks, fighter planes and helicopter gunships, the military chief of staff, Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, vowed that armed operations will continue until the government stabilizes the political situation and undertakes negotiations with the guerrillas.

In response, the rebels issued a statement to the press that warned of an escalation in their activities and, ultimately, “all-out war.” The statement referred to Ramos and his strategists as warmongers and to their operations as “irresponsible provocation.”

On the same day, the radical leftist organization Bagong Alyansang Makabayan organized a news conference and presented several residents of northern Cagayan province, who described what they said were incidents of torture and random killing by the military. They said 100 civilians had been slain in the recent offensive.

Baltazar Pinguel, a leftist spokesman, said that “the military’s dirty war in the Cagayan valley runs against the grain of the Aquino government’s humanistic policies.”

The military said Pinguel’s remarks were Communist propaganda.

Poses Problem for Regime

The increased hostilities on both sides have left Aquino’s civilian government in a quandary. Aquino came to power promising an end to the human rights violations carried out under the Marcos government. Most of those atrocities have been attributed to the military in its effort to put down the insurgency.

“There is no question it is difficult to justify using howitzers against Filipinos,” said a member of Aquino’s Cabinet, who asked not to be identified by name.

In interviews, Ramos and his senior commanders agreed that no amount of military action can by itself end the insurgency. But in the absence of a cease-fire, they said, the tens of thousands of soldiers deployed in the jungles and paddy fields must fight to survive.

If Aquino were to order a halt to the military operations, it could spark a backlash from the military, which mounted the revolt that brought her to power. Several company and battalion commanders concede that morale is plummeting because their men fear that if they fight, they may be charged with violating their civilian enemies’ human rights.

Col. Bernabe Orena, the infantry commander in Cagayan province, told Ramos at a briefing, “Right now, I think our troops are very timid because of their lack of self-confidence.”

Although Aquino has been criticized for failing to create a workable strategy for dealing with the insurgency, she and some of her top advisers told reporters that such a strategy is emerging, and that she is waiting to apply it as part of a comprehensive policy rather than approach the problem on a piecemeal basis.

Remarks in South

The president has indicated sensitivity to the political, human rights, and perhaps public relations aspects of the struggle in a tour of southern Philippine areas Friday and Saturday. She expressed reservations about the need for use of the paramilitary Civilian Home Defense Forces in a stop in Davao City and said she will press Enrile to justify use of the troops, who have been criticized for human rights abuses.

Aquino’s chief civilian strategist on the insurgency is her executive secretary, Joker Arroyo, formerly a left-leaning lawyer who represented dozens of accused Communist rebels during his career. He told an interviewer: “We do recognize what we are up against. But despite that knowledge, we are willing to negotiate with them (the Communists). I am very optimistic.”

Arroyo said his emissaries have made contact with low-level leaders of the New People’s Army and its political wing, the Philippine Communist Party. Asked whether the rebels are willing to negotiate, Arroyo replied, “They have signified ‘yes,’ but we’ve yet to see the two parties together.”

Arroyo, along with the military leaders, said that other efforts to end the war include encouraging legal political groups that would draw support from the “hard-core ideologues” among the rebels.

New Leftist Party

One well-known Communist, party founder Jose Maria Sison, who was freed from prison within days of Aquino’s rise to power, has already started a new leftist party and announced that it will offer candidates in the local elections expected early next year.

Arroyo said that in less than three months in office, “we cannot wipe out everything.” But he added, ‘At least we got rid of the climate of fear.”

Not here in the Cagayan valley, though. Querolico was just one of about two dozen mayors who gathered to tell their stories to Ramos in Tuguegarao earlier this month. One described a recent rebel attack on a schoolhouse in his town, another the burning of a hospital. Some talked about civilians killed in the military’s shelling and strafing of suspected rebel hideouts.

“How long can you expect us to go on like this?” Querolico asked.

The more optimistic of Ramos’ subordinates hope that the current escalation will turn out to be a prologue to peace. After the inspection tour in Cagayan, Ramos’ chief of operations, Col. Arturo Enrile, said he believes that the rebel offensive--23 ambushes and other encounters that have taken the lives of 46 rebels and soldiers and dozens of civilians--is a tactical effort.

To Negotiate From Strength

Col. Enrile, who is not related to the defense minister, and other top military strategists suspect that the rebels may be intensifying their struggle in the extreme north and the extreme south of Luzon so that they can go into negotiations in a position of strength.

Similarly, Manila-based leftist leaders with ties to the rebels say they suspect that the government’s show of force in Cagayan and in the Bicol region of southern Luzon is designed to give the government the upper hand in any cease-fire talks.

Still, few government analysts believe that the Communist struggle will ever end completely. Under a series of names and organizations, it dates back before World War II, when the Philippines was U.S. territory. There have been several truce agreements over the years, but most students of Philippine history doubt that there will be any lasting peace for many years.

Defense Minister Enrile, who prides himself on having read dozens of books on communism, revolution and leftist ideology, said that the government will need up to 10 years to put down the present insurgency.

Insurgent Force Eroded

The coup that brought down Marcos greatly eroded support for the New People’s Army, Enrile said, but the hard core will not give up until the Communists have at least a share of the government.

With no cease-fire in sight, the issue has provided ammunition for Aquino’s enemies, the pro-Marcos politicians who remained behind when Marcos went into exile in Hawaii.

Taking the lead, Marcos’ former labor minister, Blas Ople, assailed Aquino recently for making what he said were too many concessions to the rebels.

In an apparent effort to pressure Aquino into modifying her position in any peace talks, Ople said, “These concessions can accumulate to a point that we will wake up one morning to see a Sandinist government functioning from the presidential palace,” a reference to the Marxist-led regime of Nicaragua.